Page 1 of Reaper's Ruin
CHAPTER ONE
Rhyker
I stood behind the Shadowveil, my scythe humming beneath my skin in anticipation.
Watching.
Waiting.
Hunting.
There’s a certain pleasure in taking what doesn’t belong to you.
I felt it with every fae soul I reaped—that fleeting, satisfying snap as their essence severed from existence. That final flicker of light in their eyes when they realized Death had come for them.
I wasn’t supposed to enjoy it. Reaping was meant to be penance—a purgatory sentence for a life lived in blood and regret.
But for me?
Introducing lost fae souls to Death was the only comfort I had left.
BecauseIwas Death.
Eight hundred years of reaping had earned me that title, whispered through the shadowed halls of the Umbral Keep.
Eight hundred years without a door.
Eight hundred years of watching other Reapers pay their penance and find their endings. The Shadowveil was a place of transition, not permanence. Reapers came, served their time, and moved on once they’d made peace with whatever sins had kept them from their door in the first place.
All except me.
I remained. Eternal. Unchanging.
Death itself, with no interest in the peace they sought.
From my place in the Shadowveil that Reapers called home, I watched the lost soul through the misty barrier that separated us. A fae male who’d died weeks ago—his spirit lingering long past when it should’ve found its door.
I didn’t know how he’d died.
I didn’t know why he wouldn’t move on.
I didn’t care.
All that mattered now was the satisfaction of ending his corrupt afterlife with one clean strike.
He wandered the marketplace, still haunting the place he’d lost his life. He moved among the living, unseen, just inches from where I stalked him in the mirror world.
To me, Faelora appeared as if through a fog—colors dulled, edges softened. But it felt every bit as real as when I’d lived in it.
I shadowed him silently, matching his pace as he drifted through the crowd. He’d had weeks to find his door. To make peace. To move on. But some souls cling too tightly to what they’ve lost.
That’s where Reapers come in. We maintain balance—keeping the dead from poisoning the world of the living.
He paused, his shoulders stiffening. He glanced back, sensing something but seeing nothing.
They always feel us before the end. That primal instinct warning them that even in death... predators still exist.
I smiled, savoring his unease. He was fae, after all. And the ones like him—the ones who refused to move on—deserved the erasure from existence I offered them. No afterlife. No good ending. No bad ending. Just... gone, with one swipe of my scythe. That moment? I savored it. A sliver of vengeance for everything his kind had done to me.
